At risk of stating the obvious, you don't have to use Ubuntu of course. And come to that, you don't have to use Gnome. So rather than allowing one distro's choice of desktop to put you off Linux (or computers in general) why not use something else?

I like Unity on my netbook, the launcher at the side autohides when not needed, and the layout is perfect for the small widescreen, where I wouldn't want more than one window at a time.
Nice and fast, easy to use.

My wife uses it on her full size PC and netbook. She likes it too.
Both of her computers are used predominantly for Web browsing, email and Angry birds.

I haven't tried it on my mainPC yet, not sure how it would do.

The sig between the asterisks is so cool that only REALLY COOL people can even see it!

Anyone here trying the latest release yet (Oneiric 11.10)? I installed it yesterday and have been playing with it most concertedly (:D) since. So far I'm really quite impressed with it. No major nasties or deal-breakers, the Unity bar and dash are working incredibly well, and I'm enjoying using it on my main desktop PC.

Cautiously optimistic about this one. I'm going to stick with it for a while and see how it goes.

I've been using GUIs since Mac OS 7, windows 3.11, Linux from KDE2 on Caldera, went through KDE3, 3.5 with Suse OK, lost it with KDE4. Moved to Gnome 2 on Ubuntu, but I have never taken to a desktop as easily as I have adjusted to Unity.

The sig between the asterisks is so cool that only REALLY COOL people can even see it!

Well I couldn't disagree with him more. Still using it here and it's been great. No real issues or problems at all. Really impressive actually.

wyliecoyoteuk wrote:Moved our netbooks to 11.10, no pain.

I've been using GUIs since Mac OS 7, windows 3.11, Linux from KDE2 on Caldera, went through KDE3, 3.5 with Suse OK, lost it with KDE4. Moved to Gnome 2 on Ubuntu, but I have never taken to a desktop as easily as I have adjusted to Unity.

Well I don't quite have your experience with GUI's but I'm finding Unity really, really enjoyable in everyday use. It took a bit of finding my way about after using Gnome 3's shell for so long, but it wasn't hard and now I'm in. After 11.04 it's a revelation. I expect 12.04 will be even more together and polished.

wyliecoyoteuk wrote:Moved my main box to 11.04 last week.(Athlon X3 with dual monitors)Finding it nice and easy to use, despite my expectations. Sticking with it.

How do you find unity with dual monitors?
I switched to kde cos I didn't like the way unity played with dual monitors (having to move mouse half a mile to the left to open anything...)

Also just a general comment after installing fedora 15 in a virtual machine and having a play with gnome 3:

WTF is going on with desktop environments now a days?? who decided that (amongst other things)I don't want menus any more just one big window thing where unless I know the exact name of a program, it takes about 5 mins to find anything!

For certain you have to be lost to find the places that can't be found. Elseways, everyone would know where it was

bobthebob1234 wrote:WTF is going on with desktop environments now a days?? who decided that (amongst other things)I don't want menus any more just one big window thing where unless I know the exact name of a program, it takes about 5 mins to find anything!

I used to use the "Classic" menu format in KDE4 until a bug in one of the releases stopped it working properly with autohide, so I thought I may as well persevere with Kicker. I thought it was OK and was reasonably happy using it for some months, then switched back to the classic menu and realised what I'd been missing!

It may look a bit Win98, but I know where everything is and can get to it quickly.

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." (Albert Einstein)

bobthebob1234 wrote:WTF is going on with desktop environments now a days??

Just the usual cycle of "progress". Gnome 2.x was doing well -- reliable, reasonably featureful, and adhered to established UI models.

Of course, nobody wants to work on that. It's safe and stable and boring. So someone comes along saying "lol hay guize lets remake the whole thing to look like a tablet os with new paradigms n stuff" and boom, we have Gnome 3.

Now we just have to wait around five years for Gnome 3 to get the features and usability back. And once Gnome 3 becomes decent and operates how most people would expect, some clowns will say "lol hay guize..." and it'll be totally redesigned again to solve problems that don't exist.